Partners

Whenever the police chief of Laguna Beach wants to talk to the chief of police services in Laguna Niguel, he need only roll over in bed.

Jim and Linda Spreine, married for nine years, have achieved what police officials say is probably unique, at least in California. They each run their own city police force.

Jim Spreine (rhymes with “tiny”), 52, became chief in Laguna Beach in 1997 after a straight march from Marine Corps military policeman to city patrolman, undercover narcotics investigator, sergeant, lieutenant and deputy chief.

But when Linda Spreine entered police work in the early ‘70s, women in patrol cars were new and resented. Her path has been bumpy and twisted and strewn with land mines.

Repeatedly promoted, yet three times sent back to the patrol car by male harassment, by chance, even by love, she has finally achieved what she calls her “dream job.”

Linda Spreine, 49, heads the 35 sheriff’s deputies and investigators assigned exclusively as Laguna Niguel’s hometown police force. Though officially a sheriff’s lieutenant, she is “Chief” Spreine at City Hall, at City Council meetings and at the seemingly endless stream of community events she attends.

Though the Laguna Niguel police force is, in effect, rented from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, City Manager Tim Casey says “it feels like having your own police department and your own chief. We expect her to be active and visible in the community, just like any other police chief.”

Which is fine by Linda. “I want to remain in this job as long as the Sheriff’s Department will let me.”

Jim says he has had opportunities for jobs elsewhere but never considered taking them. Linda would have to quit and move with him, he says, and “she’s already made too many sacrifices. I would never ask my wife to start over again.”

In 1990 Linda abandoned a sure promotion to lieutenant, quit her job, changed police departments and went back to working as a patrol officer in order to preserve Jim’s job in Laguna Beach.

She did it for love and says she doesn’t regret it. It was just another bump on a bumpy road.

But why did she have to do it? It’s a long story.

When Linda Fisher graduated from Brea High School in 1968, she had no plans to become a cop.

But when she could not get a full class load at then-crowded Cal State Fullerton, she enrolled in “Introduction to Law Enforcement” at Fullerton College to fill out her schedule.

“I thought it would just be fun and easy,” she says. Instead it triggered something in her--”I don’t really know what”--and sent her toward a police career.

She transferred to Cal State Los Angeles to major in administration of justice. In 1972, with a bachelor’s degree in hand, she began job hunting.

Glendale Was Hiring

Female Patrol Officers

It took two years for the first job offer to appear, from the Glendale Police Department, and it shook her. In her final interview, the police chief remarked, “You know this opening is for patrol officer, don’t you?”

“It was a shock,” she says, “because I hadn’t been thinking at all in that direction. Women were being hired as investigators and matrons, but Glendale was hiring its first group of women to actually go on patrol.”

Linda says she took a deep breath and nodded. Though she grew up in pre-feminist days, her parents had taught her she was capable of doing anything she wanted. She signed up, went through training and found herself in a patrol car.

“How do I say this? It wasn’t the best year of my life,” Linda says. At the time, “the other patrol officers weren’t ready for women. It was something that just got thrown on them.” (Glendale’s police department now has 22 female patrol officers.)

One training officer refused to train her. When she sat down for roll call, other officers would move away. When the payroll sheet was passed around to sign, it was never passed to her.

Male patrol officers began playing dirty tricks, like sending her to a fake call where a cop she didn’t know pretended to be an unmanageable lunatic. “They tried to put me in no-win situations, making it so I could never resolve it. It was not the usual police hazing.”

After a year, “they pretty much convinced me that I didn’t want to be in police work,” Linda says. She became the last of the four new female patrol officers to quit. It was, she thought, the end of her law enforcement career.

She Worked Next

as a Meter Maid

Linda moved to Tustin and started looking for work. By sheer chance, she came upon a bulletin-board ad for a meter maid in Laguna Beach, “and I thought, ‘Jeez, I’m overqualified for that. Surely I can write parking tickets.’ ”

She got the job and discovered that not all police forces were alike. “The officers knew my background, and they immediately began encouraging me to become an officer there.”

Still skeptical, she signed up as a reserve officer, “and I couldn’t believe the difference. I’d go riding with officers, and they were so supportive. Instead of trying to make me feel totally inept, they made me feel like I was doing a good job.”

The difference, says Jim Spreine, is how cops view their community. A tough town makes for tough cops, but “then you have Laguna Beach, which is perceived as a nice, quiet community and tourist town. You get a different mentality.”

“How Linda would have done in Santa Ana I can’t tell,” says her close friend Danell Adams, a fellow patrol officer who is now a lieutenant on the Laguna Beach force.

“Knowing Linda, she probably would have toughened up and done what she had to do. Here, you don’t have to be John Wayne. Linda and I were never that way. Women just can’t work that way.”

Within a year of signing on as a meter maid, Linda was a Laguna Beach patrol officer.

Then in 1981 came a turning point in Linda’s life, although she couldn’t know it at the time. Jim Spreine, a sergeant with the San Clemente Police Department, applied for and won a job as lieutenant in Laguna Beach.

She Confided Marital

Problems to Spreine

By 1987 he had been promoted to deputy chief, she to sergeant. She had been married to a physician for five years when she confided to Spreine, her boss, that she was having marital problems. She pledged that they would not interfere with her work.

Later she told him that her husband had become unstable, had slammed his fist into her face and brought out a gun, threatening suicide. She had moved out of the house.

“I’d gone through a divorce,” says Jim. “I’d already walked that path, and I was willing to listen.

“The irony is that while I’m listening to her--it was the first time I’d gotten to know her as a person--I’m seeing how caring and sensitive she is. Her husband has a heart condition, and she’s concerned about him. She’s trying to figure out how she can work it out so it’s good for him.

“Here’s a professional woman--independent, educated, bright and very attractive. I’m a single man and thinking I’ve never run into this kind of woman. And here she’s married to this bum. I’m thinking, ‘Hey, dump the fool. Here’s me!’ I’m melting in front of this woman.”

When she returned to say her husband had begun making death threats and she was going through with a divorce, “I decided it was time for me to make my move,” Jim says. “I didn’t think she’d be available long. I wanted to be first in line.

“I’d slowly fallen in love with this woman, and I finally decide I’m going to have the [nerve] to say, ‘Linda, you know, when this thing works itself out, would you ever consider going out on a date with me?’ ”

Rather than dewy eyes, swelling background music and a slow fade to the commercial, Jim got a dose of ice water. “She said, ‘No, not at all.’ ”

Jim says he realized he “was taking a big chance.” Dating your boss breeds resentment and jealousy among co-workers, “and there was that big word, ‘sexual harassment.’ ” But he asked again after the divorce, “and she says, ‘OK, but it’s nothing more than a date.’ ”

Decision to Marry

Had Consequences

They decided to keep their dating secret. Jim informed Police Chief Neil Purcell, “and he basically says, ‘Fine, just be smart.’ ” So on dates they met in San Clemente, then went south to Oceanside.

There was another reason for secrecy, says Danell Adams. Linda’s previous husband had made death threats. “Cops aren’t bulletproof. We don’t have eyes in the back of our heads. There could have been harm. He was not happy about losing Linda.”

In 1987 when the couple decided to marry, they ran into the department’s nepotism rule.

“It was a small police department [48 sworn officers],” says Purcell, now retired and living in Montana. “In a big department it wouldn’t be a problem; you could transfer one of them to another division. But in a small department he would still be her supervisor, and favoritism would automatically be assumed.”

Purcell relied on Jim as his “right hand” and was grooming him to succeed Purcell as chief. “I told Jim there won’t be any rush, but one of you has to go--and I don’t want it to be you.”

Linda, a 15-year veteran of the force, a sergeant who was first on the list for promotion, resigned and signed on with the San Clemente Police Department. Once more, she was back in a patrol car.

“It really was a lot easier for me at my rank to leave,” Linda says. “The benefit to my personal life was worth it.”

“It’s not a sacrifice that I’ve taken lightly,” says Jim. “There’s not a day that I don’t tell her how much I appreciate it.”

It took Linda 2 1/2 years to make sergeant in San Clemente. Six months later, in 1993, the City Council dissolved its Police Department and paid the sheriff to provide policing. That made Linda a sheriff’s deputy, and in the process she lost her sergeant’s rank and was back once again in the patrol car.

She Landed

the Top Job

She made sergeant once more in 1994, then lieutenant in March. On the advice of a friend, she applied for the chief’s job in Laguna Niguel and got it.

“She was the law enforcement veteran of the group,” says Casey, the city manager.

“She also was the only candidate that had most of her law enforcement experience with city police departments as opposed to the Sheriff’s Department. She has either done or supervised all of the assignments that are most important to Laguna Niguel.”

Linda became the first woman to head a sheriff’s municipal police force, a rare accomplishment. In California, there are four female city police chiefs (El Cerrito, Ferndale, Imperial and Los Altos) and two female sheriffs (Santa Clara and Yuba counties).

Though each Spreine runs a police department, “outside the job, you would never know they were cops,” says Purcell. You might suspect something, however, if you visited their home.

Outside are their personal cars, with license plates “PIGOMY (Heart) “ and “A PIGPEN.” On the front porch are a group of pig figurines that begin grunting as you approach.

Inside is Linda’s childhood pedal car restored as a patrol car. Pig- and police-related knickknacks fill shelf after shelf.

“But the bottom line is, what we do for a living isn’t really the focal point of our relationship,” says Jim.

“Linda made a tremendous amount of sacrifice for me. I recognize all the hurdles and mountains and hoops she had to jump through just to get where she was when she left Laguna. For her to ultimately reach this position, it’s just wonderful.

“I’m very much in love with this woman. She is the center of my universe.”

“He’s always talking like that,” she says, grinning.